Both Kate and Benton had been on duty for over fourteen hours, and when the body had finally been removed, Dalgliesh had ordered them to rest for two hours, eat an early supper and join him in the Old Police Cottage at eight o’clock. Neither spent those two hours in sleep. In his darkening room, the window open to the fading light, Benton lay rigidly, as if nerves and muscles were tensed, ready at any moment to spring into action. The hours since the moment when, answering Dalgliesh’s call, they had first glimpsed the fire and heard Sharon’s screams seemed an eternity in which the longueurs of waiting for the pathologist, the photographer, the mortuary van were interposed with moments so vividly recalled that he felt they were being clicked onto his brain like slides on a screen: the gentleness of Chandler-Powell and Sister Holland, half carrying Sharon over the stone wall and supporting her down the lime avenue; Marcus standing alone on the slab of black shale, looking out over the grey pulsating sea; the photographer carefully mincing his way round the body to avoid the blood; the crack of the finger joints as Dr. Glenister broke them one by one and forced the tape from Candace’s grip. He lay there, unaware of tiredness but feeling still the pain of his bruised upper arm and shoulder from that final lunge at the chapel door.

He and Dalgliesh together had strained their shoulders against the oak but the bolt hadn’t yielded. Dalgliesh had said, “We’re getting in each other’s way. Take a run at it, Benton.”

He had taken his time over it, choosing a line which would avoid the blood, walking back some fifteen yards. The first assault had shaken the door. At the third attempt, it had burst open against the body. Then he had stood back while Dalgliesh and Kate entered first.

She had been lying, curled like a sleeping child, the knife beside her right hand. There was only one cut in her wrist but it was deep, gaping like an open mouth. Grasped in her left hand was a cassette.

The image was shattered by the clatter of his alarm and Kate’s loud knock on the door. He sprang into action. Within minutes both of them were dressed and downstairs. Mrs. Shepherd placed sizzling pork sausages, baked beans and mashed potato on the table and distanced herself in the kitchen. It wasn’t a meal she usually served, but she seemed to know that what they craved was hot comfort food. They were surprised to find themselves so hungry and ate avidly, mostly in silence, then set out together for the Old Police Cottage.